Necrobrood, a now semi-new
release from Kona, takes the metal theme
to somewhere new. Necrobrood's a 2.5 map
unit which features some new stuff and follows,
thematically, from Kona's Permutations of
the Rotten. The story is this: you've gone
through a slipgate, been captured, and now
you're stuck in a cage waiting to rot. Or
not. Happily you grab your trusty shotgun,
axe, and 25 shells and into the world of
Necrobrood you go.
Stylistically, I noticed the theme, in
terms of architecture, textures and in some
cases lighting, to be highly original. This
doesn't nessecarily mean good (I'll get
into that later), but it's safe to say you've
never seen metal quite done like this before.
Kona has taken a bunch of id Metal and Abyss
of Pandemonium Metal textures, modified
them and completemented them from various
other sources. The result is that instead
of the usual underground gray-metal complex,
you're getting a sort of turqoise-brown-green-white
combination. It really is quite colourful,
yet manages to stay gloomy in most spots.
The green grass might initially seem out
of place, but somehow it fits. Architecturally,
this is your "typical Kona" stuff
here, only much bigger and more complicated.
There isn't the same sense of place as found
in, say, "Brumal Quest" or "A
Cross To Bear," however the layouts
and architecture are very complex. Despite
the fact that angles are everywhere (making
for some excellent lighting, especially
coming from sky-grates), and damn should
you see the wall detailing (layers upon
layers of different textures), it really
doesn't look outstanding. I'm not sure why;
it's got a basically new texture set, lots
of complexity in terms of both layout and
architecture, but somehow it seems like
if you really take a step back from all
the texturing and look at the actual play
space, it's pretty simple. This isn't really
bad, just not outstanding. The interesting
thing, though, is that there is a lot of
texture variance within each map - there
are the trademark turqoise / metal areas,
but some might be gray, mostly turqoise,
green, whatever. My favourite were the copper
areas.
The first map, Escaping Bastille, starts
off quietly, and then the enemies begin
to come. Most have been reskinned and some
other stuff has been added - additional
attacks and sounds, I really liked the Hexen
II sound for picking up armour. All of this
adds a nice new feel to the pack. After
you make it through the first map, which
shouldn't be that hard, things start to
pick up. The second map is definately harder
than the first, and the third is most certainly
harder than the second. Basic gameplay consists
of grunts, knights, enforcers and hellknights
on level with you; perhaps the odd fiend
or vore, and of course, scrag ambushes and
ogre snipers. Not bad, but gets tedious
in large levels with the same gameplay continually.
Some spots were good, like the outdoor ambushes
featured in the end of the second map and
the third.
In the end, you take down Mr. Chthon, who
has made yet another nasty reappearance.
In this case though you have to fight other
monsters at the same time as him - a nice
change though I did see this in another
pack I beta tested a long time ago (ahem
ahem), which has since failed to come out.
In any case, the finale is pretty good and
some of the areas there - the skull-ring
beneath the runic panelling for instance
- do look good.
Over all, Necrobrood really didn't inspire
me too much, which is I suppose the reason
I took so damn long (sorry Kona!) to do
this review. It's certain that Kona put
a lot of work into it what with the new
theme and all the detailed architecture
and layouts, but the gameplay was only challenging
and interesting in the odd spot, and most
areas, despite the noticable differences
in texture schemes, looked pretty much the
same. A good unit for a fan of Kona's work
or the Q1SP enthusiast, but not a classic.
|